


Nothing's Fair in Love and War

by cheerynoir



Series: Drowning!verse [4]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Explicit Sexual Content, M/M, POV Second Person, Pining, Ramsay is his own warning, Recreational Drug Use, Theon makes terrible life choices, bad party etiquette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-18
Updated: 2015-03-18
Packaged: 2018-03-18 12:29:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,932
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3569753
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cheerynoir/pseuds/cheerynoir
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>Early March</em>
</p><p>Theon goes to a party and gets a little wrecked. Luckily, Ramsay's there to ferry him home safely.</p><p>Luckily. Right.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nothing's Fair in Love and War

It’s two AM on a Saturday night, and you’re not drunk enough for this.

(Not that you haven’t tried to be.)

It’s two AM on a Saturday night and the inside of your mouth tastes like shitty Northern beer and stolen Island moonshine that you’re pretty sure was made in a bathtub and flavored with cherry cough-syrup.

It makes your head pound and your fingers twitch, but it’s glancing to your left and seeing Jeyne perched on the arm of Robb’s chair, spilling into his lap, that drives you from the room. Drunk and happy, they’re every fucking happy-couple cliché you’ve ever seen and catching a glimpse of it every time you turn your head is clogging your lungs.

You unfold from the couch you’re sharing with Smalljon and Glover, smooth the wrinkles out of your shirt, and shrug off Robb’s curious look. You tap two fingers to your lips in signal, palming your lighter with your free hand, and take off without looking back. Her laughter catches you like a knife between the shoulders at the door, and you want, so desperately, to hate her.

Robb’s crew always ends up taking over a room in whatever house they’re partying in. it’s why you christened them ‘war councils’ ages ago – because only Robb would crash a party with his friends, and then refuse to mingle with the host and other guests. They bring their own booze and their own weed, though, so no one ever gets too bent out of shape. You don’t limit yourself to that group, and you like to think that when you go, it’s always your choice. But you’d admit that since Jeyne started becoming a fixture at these things, you’ve been spending more time elsewhere. Robb doesn’t like it, doesn’t like the fights you get into when you wander, but fuck him – you’re not a good enough person to sit and watch him ignore you in favor of some girl. 

(Not that he does it on purpose. Not that he knows. If he realized, maybe, he wouldn’t be so quick to laugh at Jeyne’s jokes, to tangle his fingers in her long dark hair. He’s just too good.)

(Somehow, that only makes it hurt worse.)

You wind your way through the crowded halls, passing strangers until you find yourself at the fringes of a make-shift dance-floor, watching distantly as the masses grind to shitty electronic trance music. Fucking college kids. Hot bodies press against you and the pulse of some over-mixed track pounds like some communal heartbeat in your blood. Surrounded by the drunken dregs of your own generation, you feel acutely alone.

You brighten when you think you see Kyra dancing with Bess across the room, and you summon up a smile before you start to make your way over, swaying with the music. Maybe this evening won’t be a total loss, after all.

You’re waylaid by a dark-haired girl rocking a pair of thigh-high boots and cat’s eyes done so sharp they could gut a man. She grins at you, bubble gum-pink lips plump and lovely, and you return it easily enough, letting your eyes wander and – yeah. Worth it. Her legs are fantastic and her tits are all but falling out of her shirt.

She’s wearing a baby’s pacifier around her neck and you toy with it a bit before you tug her closer and lean down enough to speak in her ear. “Got any to share, love?” you ask, and laugh when she sinks pretty white teeth into your earlobe like a tease, even as she slots a thigh between yours and your tangled bodies fall through the music for a handful of stolen moments.

You only dimly register when she slips something into her mouth, but you start paying attention when she drags you into a kiss that is more tongue and teeth than lip. It’s wet and messy and the dirty kind of hot that gets under your skin, and the pill that passes from mouth to mouth is more a bonus than you’d ever let on.

You swallow and grin, and it’s easy, then to twist out of her grip and lose yourself in the crowd. 

It’s easier still to step out onto the porch and light a cigarette, to shut your eyes and breathe deeply, licking the taste of candy-sweet lip-gloss from your lips as smoke warms you from the inside out. You’re at that mellow stage of drunkenness that means you should probably find someplace to crash and it’s almost okay, being alone but not lonely anymore at the fringes of a party.

You’re still smoking a half-hour later when it starts to feel like your skin is made of static and the world goes blurry at the edges. But there’s a sharpness to it that isn’t normal though and your breathing picks up in reply. It hits you too late that this isn’t –

It isn’t good.

_What was it cut with? Fuck, oh fuck, what –_

Eyes wide open and staring as the shadows twist and loom and cage you. There are too many iron-wood trees, too many shadows. Your muscle cramp all at once and you’re dimly aware of a pain in your jaw as your teeth grind. Your stomach curdles and you shudder as sweat breaks cold across your brow. 

Flinching is easy, and you’re lucky you don’t put out your cigarette on your skin just to feel something real. You press yourself back against the house, breathing hard, sweat stinging your eyes, and the pain of it – of the wall against your back, of your clothes scraping like steel-wool against your skin – makes you whine through clenched teeth. It’s an ugly sound, high and broken, a mirror hurtling off a cliff until it shatters on the ground. It’s uglier still when it’s torn again from your lips.

You taste bile and artificial cherries in the back of your mouth, and swallow on reflex. When that just brings up more, you stagger three steps, fall off the porch, and throw up in the azaleas with your fingers burrowing desperately in the dirt. It’s mostly liquid, you notice, and wonder, hazily, when the last time you ate was.

A cool wind picks up and you shudder and shudder, moaning hoarsely as the cycle repeats and you fold up in a puddle of cold sweat and bile and second-hand alcohol.

You lose track of time. Someone must come and see you like this, because eventually somebody’s pushing your sweat-damp hair out of your face, rubbing soothing circles just west of your spine with hands warm and calloused and the gentlest fucking thing you’ve ever felt. It hurts like sandpaper over raw nerves, and you shudder and bury a whimper in another round of dry-heaving.

You’d know those hands on your deathbed. You’d know those hands blind and deaf and dumb.

“Robb,” you say, when you can breathe without gagging.

“Hey,” he says, soft. You know from one syllable that he’s too drunk for this. You ignore the pang of guilt, because you think you’re going to sweat out of your skin and the thought alone makes you retch.

“Theon Theon Theon-” Seven save you, you love the way he says your name. “-What’d you take? ‘s’wrong?”

“Drank too much,” you reply, and wipe your clammy forehead with your sleeve. If you keep your eyes on a fixed point – your own knees, the puddle of vomit beyond – the shadows don’t seem so long and clawing. Or at least, if they are, it’s easier to ignore them. (You’ve been ignoring shadows for years, after all. It might be the one thing you’re good at). You risk a glance upwards, try out a smile, and Gods, he’s never had a decent poker face, not in all the years you’ve known him. He’s drunk and too expressive and he’s worried, fuck you’ve worried him, and he’s chewing on his lower lip like he always does, and it’s as distracting as it always is, even when you want to put your head through a closed window just to make everything stop. He reeks of Jeyne’s sweet-sharp perfume and pot smoke and that’s still not enough to kill the desire in your churning stomach.

“-home,” he’s saying, and you zone back in, blinking. “Okay? We’re going home.”

“Okay,” you say, because you’ve never been able to tell him no and he’s never seemed to realize. You try to stand, wiping your mouth, and his hands are on your shoulders, on your back, and his arm is heavy and steadying around your waist.

He could carry you without difficulty, you realize, and laugh. Of the two of you, he’s always been stronger. That just makes you laugh harder, though it’s tinged with hysteria. Even you can hear it.

His worry folds in on itself and intensifies. His eyes are very blue, his hair very red. You want to kiss him, but you always want that. It’s easy to ignore. Easy like holding your breath.

He’s going for his keys and you’re leaning on him, letting him, when a voice comes from everywhere and nowhere and Ramsay Bolton seems to materialize like a thing out of a nightmare. You flinch, and Robb steadies you.

“Not the best idea, I think,” he’s saying, hands in his pockets, remarkably sober. The shadows writhe around his feet and you wonder why he hasn’t noticed yet, why he’s not screaming as they crawl up his neck and claw at his eyes. You look away, breathing shallowly through your mouth. There’s nothing left in your stomach to bring up.

“He’s got to get out of here,” Robb is saying, and Ramsay holds up his hands, placating. “He’s sick.”

“Never said he should stay. Look, you’re too drunk and I just got here. I’ll take him. It’ll save you cab money.”

You can’t look at either of them because there are monsters in the shadows made of razor-wire and shattered glass, with used syringes as teeth and eyes that drip like pus from the zits you used to pick, and the creatures press close, too close. You smell rotting flesh and roses in the sound of Robb’s silence, his hesitation.

“He shouldn’t be alone,” says Robb at last, like that’s the ace up his sleeve. Like Ramsay has some problem with Theon’s company. You almost regret not telling him the details, but that hardly matters now. You shove your fingers in your mouth and chew them to hold back a scream.

“I’ve got no problem with that.” Ramsay’s words come at a distance. You shut your eyes and breathe through another wave of nausea. 

Breathing doesn’t work. You throw up a mouthful of candy-sweet bile and that, more than anything, seems to change Robb’s mind.

“Okay,” he’s saying, rubbing at your back like that’s going to settle you. “Okay, sure. His address is—”

“I know where he lives,” Ramsay says, smirking. 

“Shut up,” you tell him. Or try. It’s hard to get anything out around your own fingers.

“Bedroom furthest from the door,” Ramsay goes on, hands in his pockets, rocking back on his heels. “If I recall correctly? Blue walls, grey comforter?”

“…I didn’t realize you were that close,” says Robb. You wonder if dying messily would derail this conversation. Your luck isn’t that good.

“I’d wager there’s a lot you don’t realize,” says Ramsay, laughing. He looks at you like he’s inviting you in on it, and if you didn’t feel like death warmed over, you’d blush.

You wonder if killing him messily would end this conversation. 

Your muscles cramp again and you whine, wobbling, until you can lock your knees just to stay upright. Robb startles, you can feel it, and he’s quick to pass you off this time.

“Look, just get him home,” says Robb. He almost sounds sober. 

He hovers along, though, too close, your shoulders bumping, until Ramsay pours you into the passengers’ side of his car. For a wild second, you think Robb’s going to insist on coming along, that he’s going to clamber into the back and spend the ride talking to you like he does sometimes when you’re both fucked up – low and sweet and quiet, like an anchor, like a lifeline. But he startles, looks back towards the house. 

Jeyne’s standing on the porch, swaying, waving him down. Robb steps away.

You press your forehead against the glass and shut your eyes, relishing the chill. When you open them again, you’ve left the Northern suburbs behind, and you’re somewhere in the vicinity of the main drag – the King’s Road, heading south-west. You’re shivering so hard your teeth would chatter if you could relax your jaw.

Ramsay’s talking but the words sound like they’re coming from underwater. You shut your eyes again and curl your fists against your thighs, and breathe through your mouth. You smell like old beer and cold sweat and cigarettes. You smell like puke and sadness and desperation. You _reek_.

You want a shower. You want sleep. You want to claw the first three layers of your skin off, to be clean. To start over. Maybe then you could be – you could be a brother to Robb. Maybe then you could be pleased that he’s found someone he’s so wild about. Maybe then you could stop fucking up everything you touch. Maybe then you could be a proper Islander, not just someone your sister had to bail out of scrapes. Maybe…

You don’t know if it’s the E or the spiralling of your thoughts, but by the time Ramsay pulls into the lot outside your apartment on Pyke, you don’t feel fit to do anything but lay in the gutter and die. The world is blurry, and you don’t know if its tears or the drug playing tricks.

“Come on, up you get,” he coaxes, and half carries, half-drags you out of the car. You stagger, try to keep up, but for someone with such short legs, Ramsay’s quick, and you nearly taste concrete trying to keep up. But his hands are warm and his grip on you hurts. That’s alright, though. That just means he doesn’t want you to fall.

You kiss him clumsily outside your front door, because your neighbours don’t give a shit and you haven’t seen Asha in a month. Because you feel like a ragged thing, a disgusting thing, and you want to be distracted from the poison spreading cell to cell in your brain. It’s worked before. With girls, with him. It’s easy to lose yourself in someone else – easier than breathing. The angle is wrong and your teeth catch his lip and you can taste bile and blood on your tongue from when you bit yourself tripping, but it should work.

He fixes things – knots his hands in your hair too-tight and drags you in until you can’t muck it up or breathe all that well. You shudder, cold sweat dripping down your spine, bite down on his tongue as another shiver racks you – lightning and ice – and you can’t help but set your jaw.

He jerks back with a curse and laces his fingers at your nape so you can’t twist away. “You taste like shit,” he says. 

“I taste like blood, you fucking vampire,” you slur, and you’re almost proud that all the words make it out. He grins. Licks the blood off his pearly white teeth.

He steals your keys to get into the flat, steers you through without turning on the lights. The place is empty, chilly, and damp. Your bedroom isn’t much better, but you let yourself be sat down at the edge of the bed and undressed. His touch is the furthest thing from clinical, and he looks at you like he wants to own you.

There’s no small part of you that doesn’t mind that look. It might be nice, to be wanted for more than one night.

There are kisses that hurt, teeth that press bruises into your jaw, your neck, your shoulder, but you’ve always liked pain more than you should. It’s easy to moan, to let your mind focus on the sensation, rather than what you’re doing, or with who. It’s exactly what you need – a distraction. You’re glad Ramsay followed your lead with this, at least. You skin sparks like wild-fire, and you burn under his hands, his mouth. There is a bonfire in your gut, and you sweat and moan and he only stokes the flames higher still.

But for all this, you’re soft, and stay that way when he grips you, teases you, even ducks his head to lick at you. You jerk at the touch, hot and wet and not entirely unexpected, but you find it dances on the razor-blade between pain and pleasure. Overwhelming.

He laughs, low, a moment later. “Whiskey-dick,” he mutters, and the monsters lurk at his back, saliva dripping thickly, glaring. You cringe back and he doesn’t bother to follow your gaze. His hands run up your thighs to your hips, push you back and turn you over. It seems to take no effort, but that makes sense. You’re taller than him, tall and skinny – he’s broader than you, better built. You think he’s putting you to bed – not like you can continue, right? – and crawl towards the pillows.

“Good thing one of us was prepared,” he says, and you don’t know if he’s talking to you or to himself. You wonder about it for a second, but then the monsters come out cackling and the walls start melting and it doesn’t matter anymore. You slam your eyes shut, panting. You tremble.

The comforter feels like silk against your chest, your palms, and you clench your fists in it and fight to keep still. But you can’t help but rubbing your cheek on it a little with a sigh.  
It occurs to you too late. What he’s doing, that is. What the oh-so-familiar crinkling means. Stupid. You’re so stupid.

His hands on your thighs, rubbing a thumb over the raised scar there. His hands on your ass, fingernails digging in. His fingers –

_Wait. Wait no – that’s not how we do this. We don’t – I never – s-stop. Stop._

You don’t know if you say it or think it but either way he doesn’t, just hums to himself as he slicks his fingers and pushes them in. You thrash, or try to, but his free hand is at the small of your back and he’s hushing you, petting, saying “It’s alright, it’s alright, you’re fine, I’m not hurting you, see? Just relax, it’ll feel good soon, I’m helping you, you’re so tense, shh shh” and you think you’re hyperventilating. You’re so tense you’re shaking – drugs or nerves? Not even you’re sure.

He’s right though. Ramsay usually is. It does feel good eventually.

You still have no idea how he’s taken your cock and liked it before, because when he shoves in, you can’t breathe, like you’re so fucking full there’s no room left for air in your lungs or thoughts in your head. You pant and twist and your palms slip on the comforter and he just fucks you through it, until you can do nothing but revel in what your nerves are telling you: the thick, hot drag of him inside of you, the stretch and shuddery clench of your muscles, the pleasure like crimson flames behind your eyes every couple of thrusts, beautiful like a dagger dipped in blood. The mouth on your neck and the hands pressing hard into your hips.

You hear yourself as if from a distance – no words, just animal sounds: whimpers and moans and mewls, breath panting between grinding teeth. It sends a hot flush of shame through you; you are never this loud. But it just makes Ramsay quicken his pace.

He says your name as he comes, and he makes it sound ugly and used. Dirty.

Fitting, really.

You wake up alone, the sun high in the sky. He rolled you onto your side, at least, and that thought sticks in your scrambled brains as you sit up in bed. You look down at yourself and away quickly. There are bruises on your shoulders, your hips. Moving hurts, from a pain that twinges deep inside you. You try to tell yourself it’s the good kind of pain – the kind of pain you like, that you welcome, that you deserve since you started that mess last night anyway – but you give up quickly in favor of not thinking at all.

You ignore it instead, the bruises and the pain and the general shakiness, and drag yourself to the bathroom. You shower in the dark, and go back to bed until there’s a pounding on the door.

“Coming, I’m coming,” you yell, when it’s clear that ignoring it won’t make the problem go away.

It’s March, so you throw on jeans and socks and three shirts – undershirt, tee-shirt, button-down – before you think better of it and add a hoodie, too. The sleeves of the sweatshirt fall over your hands, because Robb stretched out the shoulders when he wore this hoodie on and off for six months last year before you managed to steal it back from him.

Speak of the devil, you think, when you open the door and Robb stares back. He looks like death warmed over, and by the look on his face, you don’t come off much better. Fucking hang-overs.

“Hey,” he says.

“Hi,” you rasp. You let him in and lock the door behind him.

“You okay?” he asks, as you follow him to the sofa and collapse. You put your feet in his lap, because the sofa is small and you’re more leg than anything else and gods, you want to touch him.

Of course he noticed the limp. But his hands are warm and gentle, and he curls his fingers around your ankle like he doesn’t even notice he’s doing it. He rubs his thumb in little circles around the bone, and you feel yourself relax.

“Fell getting out of the car last night,” you mumble, and put an arm over your eyes.

“Sorry, man,” he’s saying. “I should have come with. It’s just that Jeyne-”

“Don’t worry about it,” you say, and wave him off. Another thing you’re really fucking good at.

“Really, I should have-”

“It’s okay, I said,” you snap.

“…If you say so,” he mutters at last, sounding tired and a little bit hurt.

Guilt settles in your chest and starts making its bed there. You should be used to that by now. You swallow. “Want to watch a movie?”

“Yeah, okay. Which?”

“You pick,” you say. _Whatever you want, Robb._

You’re not really surprised when you end up spending the rest of the day marathoning the Harry Potter movies, but you are quietly, sweetly pleased by it. By mid-way through _The Chamber of Secrets_ , you’ve cocooned yourselves in every spare blanket in the apartment, and you’re close enough that you can match your breathing to Robb’s. His head is heavy on your shoulder, his arm a tether around your waist, his palm warm against your skin, under all your layers.

He falls asleep during _The Order of Phoenix_ , and in the lengthening twilight that sweeps the living-room, it’s hard not to tuck yourself closer and shut your eyes. Hard like holding your breath.

Your lungs ache.

You breathe deeply, evenly, and rest your cheek on his hair.

Last night just seems like a bad dream. And you are so tired of nightmares.

When you sleep, it is dreamless.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading, guys, I know that wasn't - well, entirely pleasant, huh? [Theonaf](http://www.theonaf.tumblr.com/), my lovely beta, thanks so much. And an extra thank-you to everyone else who commented so far - you're all awesome!
> 
> Come say hi on [tumblr](http://www.cheerynoir.tumblr.com/) !


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